JACKSON — A prison inmate accused of conspiring to steal guns from the Greenwood Police Department wants to block federal prosecutors from using recorded conversations and other information to convince a jury the weapons were sold in Chicago.
Authorities say several inmates and others conspired to steal five Colt M-16 machine guns, 11 Smith & Wesson .40-caliber pistols and 90 pounds of marijuana from the Police Department. Inmates who were working at the police station as part of a community work program allegedly broke into a locked closet and took the items in late 2005 and early 2006.
Andre Redmond, who was serving a five-year sentence for accessory to auto theft, allegedly helped smuggle the 11 pistols out of Greenwood City Hall where they had been stashed and hoped to sell them to his “Uncle Blood” from Chicago, according to a 16-page federal indictment in the case.
Redmond, 35, and his supervisor in the work program, a county employee, allegedly delivered the pistols to Redmond’s girlfriend, Jennifer L. McGee.
Prosecutors say she took them to Redmond’s cousin in Lexington, Miss. McGee pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count in the case. Six others had already pleaded guilty to various charges.
Redmond is scheduled for trial Monday in U.S. District Court in Aberdeen. He’s charged with conspiracy, possession of firearms by a convicted felon and aiding and abetting the theft of the pistols.
His attorney did not immediately respond Tuesday to a call from The Associated Press.
Authorities haven’t said if the weapons made it to Chicago or how many have been recovered. However, a court motion filed Monday by Redmond’s attorney indicated a law enforcement officer in Chicago claims someone bought at least one of the guns there. Details of the alleged purchase were not spelled out in the court filing. Also, there are few details about the thefts of the five machine guns in the indictment, and Redmond didn’t face charges related to those.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which investigated the case, referred questions to the U.S. attorney’s office because the case is pending. John Alexander, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how many guns have been recovered. Greenwood Police Chief Henry Purnell did not respond to a message Tuesday, but he has previously said some of the guns were recovered.
Redmond’s attorney asked the judge to block the statement from the Chicago officer about a gun allegedly being sold there as well as recorded phone calls allegedly between Redmond, former Leflore County Road Department employee Derek “Dee” Salley and another man.
The phone records improperly infer that because Redmond and Salley “allegedly were talking with someone in Chicago, that Redmond must have transferred guns to Chicago,” according to a four-page motion that seeks to suppress the calls. Salley pleaded guilty last week to two counts in the case.
Eight people were indicted in the case. The prisoners allegedly involved were state inmates assigned to the Leflore County Community Work Center. Some of them cleaned the police station as part of their duties and noticed the guns in the closet when they were escorted to get tools to clean, according to the indictment.
They figured out a way to remove a ceiling tile in an adjacent room and one of them entered the closet from above, the indictment said. It said they stashed the weapons in trash bags at Greenwood City Hall, in a town of about 18,000 people, before having them smuggled out.
Federal agents have long sought to curb the flow of weapons from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago and other major cities by way of the Interstate 55 corridor. However, those weapons are usually bought in Mississippi gun shops in “straw purchases,” in which someone buys a gun for someone else _ often convicted felons who can’t legally own a firearm.
People can double or triple their money by selling the guns on the streets in big cities, authorities say.
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